We’re Averaging One School Shooting Every 60 Hours In 2018

A reported shooting at a South Florida high school on Wednesday marks the country’s 18th school shooting of 2018, just 45 days into the year.

That’s an average of one school shooting every 60 hours thus far in 2018, more than double the number of school shootings recorded in any of the previous three years in that same period. Those numbers are according to data compiled by the gun control advocacy organization Everytown for Gun Safety, which defines a school shooting as any time a firearm is discharged on or around a campus.

Details are still emerging about what happened during Wednesday’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, but as of 6:30 pm., at least 15 people had been reported dead.

Students embrace after being released from a lockdown during Wednesday’s shooting.

Some three months later, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders had little new information on that subject.

“The president believes that all Americans deserve to be safe in their schools and in their communities,” Sanders said after a deadly school shooting in Kentucky last month. “We’ve tried to crack down on crime throughout the country.”

A man standing in the school’s parking lot called 911 saying he was suicidal. He spoke with a county official for several hours on the phone, according to local media, but ultimately shot himself and died from a single gunshot wound.